Madder: Day 1 & 2

day 1
i suppose technically speaking, yesterday was day 1 of my Madder project. i spent yesterday acquiring and gathering supplies. my shopping list consisted of the following items, some of which i had no idea where one might purchase them:

3 liter heat resistant glass container (such as a mason jar or beaker)
2 liter heat resistant glass container (such as a mason jar or beaker)
15-20 liter plastic bucket
10 liter plastic bucket
chemical filter papers
siphon
60 grams potassium carbonate (potash)

although my recipe (located here: http://www.rubioviolins.com/Pages/lake1.html) did mention that i could use regular tap water, i've gotten some odd and unexpected results with other dyes, which are potentially related to my tap water (it's a working theory that is by no means necessarily true)... but I didn't exactly want to take a chance on my tap water, considering the time investment i'm planning to put into this project. so I added distilled water to my shopping list. I also had a number of other supplies already on hand. The oddest items on my shopping list were the chemical filter papers and the potassium carbonate, followed my the glass containers - which were not odd per se, but I wasn't sure where to locate some quite that size.

I started by asking my science teacher friend, Tam, if she had an idea of where I could find the chemical filter papers. She knew what they were, of course, but she didn't know where to acquire them locally. She said she had a number of them in her classroom, but mentioned that her and her husband usually order them rather than purchase locally. My recipe noted that they could be purchased through a lab supplier, which was a start. I did a local google search for "lab supplier" - I called the first one that came up in the list, which turned out to be a lab, not a supplier. the second turned out to be a wholesaler, but they did happen to know of another supplier in Monroe (a bit over an hour away from me) that did retail sales. So I called All World Scientific, and described my rather strange situation - which was that I sort of knew what I needed, but not exactly. She had a number of chemical filter papers available - I don't know enough about what I'm doing or about the differences between the types of chemical papers to be able to decide which one is going to work best - and neither did she. We made a best guess based on diameter of the filters and pricing. I also asked about beakers, which she could also provide, but she had limited sizing. I ended up with two 3-liter beakers, which I can't imagine will hurt my process. Better too large than too small, I assume. Then I asked about potassium carbonate. She knew what it was (which was one step ahead of me), and said that she could order it for me, but didn't have it on hand. I declined, optimistically hoping I could track it down for same day purchase.

I sent Tam another message asking if she might know where I could acquire the potassium carbonate - to which she replied that she didn't know what it was. (maybe she does know what it is, but wasn't familiar with the term potash, which I used in the message, and which was used in my recipe. after yesterday I have quit using the term myself, since it doesn't actually seem to be a common nickname for the product, and i suspect my recipe originated in the UK). Next I got the idea to start calling my own people - I'm using it for an artistic purpose - maybe an art supply shop or a dye product shop would know? I called Daniel Smith (by far the best art supply shop in my area) - they seemed to know what it was, but didn't carry it. They offered me up another product, which I declined since it was not what I was looking for. Then I tried a local natural dye supply, Earthues - they also knew what it was, and understood exactly what I wanted it for, but didn't carry it. She did give me a good idea though - she mentioned that it is a product sometimes used with pools. I did another google search to see just exactly what the most common uses for it were. As it turns out, it seems that it's sometimes used in beer and wine making. Since I was already planning to stop at a home brew shop to pick up a siphon, I thought I'd call and see if they had it. Strange enough - they did!

I spent the next couple of hours driving around picking up my supplies. All World Scientific was a very difficult little place to locate. It was an unmarked suite in the back of a little gray building that wasn't exactly where the address said it should be.... but because I'm determined, I managed to find it, and thus found my beakers and filters. The home brew shop was easier. Mike is a regular customer at a home brew shop in Kirkland, so I knew it would be relatively easy to find. And sure enough, I got my siphon and my potassium carbonate. I stopped at Home Depot and the grocery store for the buckets and my distilled water. Finally arriving home with all of my supplies, day 1 was complete.

day 2
Day 2 began just a few hours ago. Once going, the first step of the process requires that my dye be kept at about 40-45*C (a bit over 100*F) for 36 hours. (no that is not a typo, I do mean a day and a half). So timing was everything here. I decided that it would be nice to begin around 10pm, so that my project would be ready to come off of the heat at 10am two days later. I also decided that it would be wise to have a good stock of movies on hand, since I will not be leaving the house for 2 days with the stove on.

First, I gathered together the supplies I would need for this step of the process. Pictured below are: my new 3 liter beaker, a gallon of distilled water, potassium carbonate, and my madder root.

First, I measured out 2400 mL of the distilled water. Fortunately for me, my beaker was labeled with mL.
Next up, I needed to add the potassium carbonate...

my instructions call for 60 grams of potassium carbonate. unfortunately my scale measures in ounces. Although it looks like it could be switched over to measure in grams, I couldn't find any setting or switch that would actually change it over (as far as I can tell, it is a big fat tease). ...so this is where practical application of math finally comes in handy, right? wrong. this is 2010 - who needs to know how to do this crap by hand when you can do a google search? and being the well educated individual that I am, i didn't search on wikipedia or trust the first site that came up. I compared answers from a variety of search results, to make sure there was consensus between sources. It actually came up that approx 2.12 ounces = 60 grams, but considering that my scale measures to the nearest 0.05 of an ounce, i just got it to read 2.15, then removed the smallest pieces until it bounced down to 2.10, and assumed it was close enough for my purpose.

I've always thought it was interesting how water goes suddenly cloudy when a powder substance is added, even if the powder eventually completely dissolves and turns the water back to clear. I'm sure there is a scientific explanation involving the undissolved particles reflecting or blocking the reflection of light, probably much like whatever scientific explanation there is for fog... it doesn't really matter much to me why it happens - i just find it interesting to watch. and so i included a photo of that too.

it did begin to dissolved, and as it did so, the water began to turn a bit orange.

once it was completely dissolved, the water was a nice gold color. This is just the distilled water plus potassium carbonate. (and once dissolved, it's back to a nice clear solution, i might add).

(i also think it's kind of fun to see the swirls of color, which are probably where higher concentration of the potassium carbonate are floating - again, I don't really need to know the why to appreciate the optically interesting effect below).


and next it was time to weigh my madder root. my recipe called for 160 to 180 grams of madder root, depending on how strong of a color you want. Obviously I want a nice strong color here, so I was aiming for 180 grams. Once again, I had to convert that to ounces. And once again this is 2010, and I see no need to bother with actual math here, so I turned to the internet once more, and came up with approx 6.35 ounces. That was a number I could certainly measure on my scale, and so you can see my 6.35 oz of madder roots below:

my recipe says they can be whole, chopped, or ground before adding them to the water. when I bought them, I bought whole roots because I wanted to be as close to my natural source as possible (although you can buy them ground). Not wanting to spend the insane amount of time to grind them by hand, I opted instead to coarsely chop them before adding them to my water. Although I did attempt using a knife for this, I discovered that simply snapping them in half with my fingers worked best. I added them to the water as I went, and as you can see in the next few photos, they began to change the color of the water immediately. After the first couple of handfuls of coarsely cut roots, the water had already changed from the golden color to a reddish/orange color.

A few more roots, and the water looked like an orange/tea color. I was not stirring the water at this point - just tossing roots in.

The next photo shows all of the roots in the beaker, but without any stirring. Even without the stirring, the water was a dark color, like coffee.


After finally stirring the mix, here's a view from the top. It has a nice earthy aroma to go with the wet wood look, too.

Although the dye is not cloudy, the color is so dark that it's nearly black.

Next i put my mix over low heat. I need to keep it at 40-45*C for a day and a half. Here it is, starting out at room temperature.

below are a couple of views of the dark dye while waiting for the temperature to rise to 40*C

And voila - it didn't take long to get it up to 40*C. I turned the temp down, and have been monitoring it for the past hour or two, trying to make sure it doesn't heat to more than 50*C, but also trying to keep it at least 40*C. It did rise to about 45*C before going back down a bit. It has been hovering right around 40*C for about the past half hour, which is right where I want it.

Once I'm sure it's going to stay in that range consistently without my needing to adjust the heat, I'll settle in for my first daring night of leaving the stove on while I go to sleep. I feel suspiciously like I'm doing something dark and dangerous and rebellious. Surly you're not ever supposed to turn the stove on and go to sleep? (except when you're making madder root dye, I guess). Just in case, I'm sleeping downstairs, quite near the kitchen.